And there's plenty of Democrats that can do the same. ;)

There may be some Dems here but they are seriously outnumbered. Of course, that's because Corvette owners, as a group, are achievers, as opposed to underachievers who tend to rely on the government cheese. While the general population has about the same number of D's as R's , this site is no where near 50/50.

[Modified by need-for-speed, 2:37 AM 2/8/2004]

You've taken a poll of the forum membership I'm sure, so you can back up your motor mouth? A typical Republican remark (especially those from Texas): "Ah speaks for everyone here!".

Are you implying that all Democrats are on welfare? :rolleyes:

Keep on insulting people that aren't Republicans, you'll win a lot of folks over to your side that way!

Some on this forum love to line up behind Chevrolet and whatever they do apparently becomes the greatest thing (these same people probably make good Republicans

Care to make any racist statements while you're at it?

Since that book was written, the Northstar engine has been adapted for use in Cadillac's flagship, the XLR. GM's wizards get 320 bhp out of a mere 4.6L for a car that's probably a little on the detuned side for your average Cadillac owner. That's 70.1 bhp/liter to 71.5 bhp/liter for the LS6.

Oh yeah, the XLR's Northstar engine has continuously variable valve timing.

I thought it was a rotary engine :lolg:

I'm still waiting for poppet valve guy to turn up

For those of you who still consider pushrod engines to be "obsolete" or "old tech", consider the following brief history.

Certainly by the late eighties when the Corvette's L-98 engine produced a whopping 250 HP from 350 CID, the last nail in the coffin of pushrod technology had been pounded in, right?

I had given up years before (as exemplified by my purchase of a Cosworth Vega in 1976), and saw the elegance of the modern narrow valve angle reincarnation of the four valve DOHC head that was first laid out by Keith Duckworth in the late sixties. The centrally located spark plug and compact combustion chamber, with just modest quench zones compared to the wedge chamber in typical OHV V-8s, yielded both excellent thermal efficiency, detonation resistance, and low "engine out" emissions, and the cylinder head flow numbers are what guys only dream about.

The actual mechanical complexity of the layout was minimized with the single piece cam carrier with integral cam bearings and belt driven cams. In fact, there are considerably fewer moving parts per valve than on a pushrod design. In engineering, simplicity and elegance usually go hand in hand.

Then GM threw a fly in the ointment by developing the LT1 V-8 in the early nineties. In one fell swoop, power increased 20 percent, and the new LT1 had higher net specific output (HP/CID) than any previous small block V-8. Not resting on their laurels, they went on to develop the LT4, LS1, LS6, and now the LS2 to be followed in the not too distant future by the LS7, which will undoubtedly raise the bar for specific output while maintaining the pushrod V-8's low internal friction for miserly fuel consumption, light weight, small package volume, and high torque with outstanding torque bandwidth that flows from being able to package more displacement per unit mass and volume than DOHC designs.

In short, GM keeps REINVENTING the pushrod V-8, which keeps forcing me to redefine what "high tech" means. The LS7's peak output is expected to be DOUBLE the L-98 (with better EPA fuel economy), in a package that is lighter and shorter in length and height with only a slight increase in width, and given the expected increase in displacement this will represent a specific output increase of close to 80 percent!

If any of you out there are with GM Powertrain, I offer my hearty congratulations for the job you have done, and hope you keep up the great work in the future. :flag

Duke


[Modified by SWCDuke, 7:18 PM 1/17/2004]

The Corvette Engine is obsolete in light of Fords supercharged 4.6 and 5.4.
Ironic...

I would very much disagree. Ford's use of a supercharger is an attempt to make up for their engines' shortcomings. Bolt a supercharger on an LS1, LS6 or LS2 and compare the numbers you get. When you have to resort to the use of forced induction to compete with cars that are N/A and still are at a performance disadvantage that tells me there is something seriously wrong with your design.